Deciding to study a degree can be a big financial commitment, which is why it's important for you to learn about the fees you will need to pay as well as how to manage your money before you start your studies.
Tuition Fees
Full-time tuition fees for ‘home’ students starting degrees in 2025/2026 will be £8,745 per academic year unless otherwise stated.
The exception to this is our Acting and Production Arts Foundation Degrees and Acting Top Up which are charged at £9250 per academic year, due to the additional teaching hours involved.
You can find course fees on the individual course pages, or through UCAS. An overview of our course fees can be found in our fees table.
Paying your tuition fees
There are 3 main ways students usually pay for their tuition fees which include:
- A tuition fee loan from Student Finance England (sfe)
- Their employers fund their course
- Students pay for their own tuition fees
Tuition fee loan from Student Finance England
Tuition fee loans are provided by the Student Loans Company and applications are made to Student Finance England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland as appropriate.
Student finance opens for applications in early spring each year, but the dates and deadlines differ depending on which country you live in.
We would encourage you to apply for your student finance as soon as possible to ensure your finances are in place for the new academic year.
If applying for a tuition fee loan, please remember to select the following details:
Academic year - 2025/2026
Institution - Luminate Education Group
The repayment threshold and timescales can vary depending on when you took your loan out. For students starting their degree in September 2025, the repayment threshold for tuition fee loans is set at £25,000. This means that you will only start paying your loan back once you graduate and start earning over this amount. For more information on repaying your loan, visit the gov.uk website.
If you're a student from outside the UK, you can find a handy guide to applying for student finance on the Student Room. We also have more details on our fees and funding for international students page.
If you have any queries about your eligibility for student finance, you should check this with the relevant funding body as appropriate. We do not make decisions about eligibility for loans; the decision lies with the funding body directly.
Please be aware there are no tuition fee waivers on grounds of circumstance or age. If you have studied in higher education before, either in the UK or elsewhere, this could affect the financial support you receive. We suggest you visit the Student Finance England website here find out your eligibility. If you live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, please contact your own Award Authority as the regulations could be different.
Student Finance England consider a Top Up (Level 6) to be a separate course from a Foundation Degree/HND and therefore you should say you are in year 1. However, you should also indicate that you are a continuing student in undergraduate study.
For the most recent information relating to fees please see the Fees and Refund Policy by Clicking here.
Part-time HE tuition fees for 'home' students starting programmes in 2025 will be £4,372 per academic year unless otherwise stated. You can find course fees on the individual course pages, or through UCAS. An overview of our course fees can be found in our fees table.
There may be optional or mandatory additional costs based on the course you apply for and are for resources that you may need to be able to study on your course such as materials for art-based courses, a kit for sports based courses or a DBS for those that require a placement. For information relevant to your course please visit the relevant course page which can be found here.
Alternative ways to pay
If your employer will be paying your fees, we require a letter upon enrolment (on company letterhead) requesting an invoice for your fees with a purchase order number. This letter needs to state your name and the course fee. Our finance office can then raise an invoice from our finance system.
If you intend to pay the tuition fees yourself, we require 25% of the year’s tuition fees at enrolment in September. Payments can be made online and we require you to specify how you plan to pay at the start of your course:
- Enter 25% of the course value and select the Pay now payment method to pay your deposit by credit/debit card
- Enter 75% of the course value and select the Recurring card payment payment method to pay your balance over 6 recurring card payments
All payments (in full and recurring card payments) can be made on the following site: https://payment.leedscitycollege.ac.uk/enroldeposit/
If you would like to update your card against an existing Recurring card payment plan, please use the following link and onscreen instructions: https://payment.leedscitycollege.ac.uk/customer-card-update
Maintenance Loans
The other major cost you will have as a student is living costs; this includes accommodation, utilities, travel, food and any course materials. If there are costs associated with your particular course of study this will be outlined on our course pages
To support with meeting these costs, you’re entitled to apply for a maintenance loan. This is a means-tested loan and will take a number of factors into consideration, including:
- Household income – this means the total gross income of the students’ parent(s), caregivers or spouse living in the household where the student lives
- Living arrangements – students living away from home are entitled to a higher maintenance loan than those staying in the family home
There are other factors taken into account, but these are the major ones. There is a Student Finance calculator on the Student Finance website which you can use to check eligibility for student loans.
You apply for your maintenance loan at the same time as your tuition fee loan and it is paid directly into your bank account in three instalments. The first instalment will be paid once your attendance at University Centre Leeds has been confirmed – we use the date you collect your ID card as the confirmation of attendance and it can take three to five working days after this before the monies are released.
Repayments
Full-time students will not start repaying their loan until the April after you leave us once you're earning over £27,295. This earning threshold may be adjusted annually in line with average earnings by the government.
Your Tuition Fee Loan and Maintenance Loan are added together to make one borrowed amount. You don't start paying it back until you've left university and are earning over £25,000 per year. This figure is updated in April every year. You pay back 9% of everything you earn above the £25,000 threshold. For example:
- a person with an income of £30,000 per year will pay £20.29 per month
- a person with a salary of £40,000 a year will pay £95.29 a month.
- If you haven't repaid the loan 40 years after you have left university, then any remaining debt will be written off.
|
Yearly income before tax |
Monthly income before tax |
Monthly repayment |
|
Up to £25,000 |
£ |
£0 |
|
£30,000 |
£ |
£38 |
|
£35,000 |
£ |
£75 |
|
£40,000 |
£ |
£113 |
|
£45,000 |
£ |
£150 |
|
£50,000 |
£ |
£188 |
More information can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/student-finance.
Grants and Allowances
If you get funding from Student Finance England* you may be able to apply for some additional grants and allowances. Some of these are income assessed.
This is a grant if you have a partner or other adult depending on you financially (not including grown-up children) and is worth up to £3,263 a year depending on your household income.
Any amount you’re entitled to is paid to you in addition to your main student finance package. It’s paid directly into your bank account in three instalments, at the same time as any Maintenance Loan or other grants you get.
You can’t get this grant if the dependent adult is also a student receiving student finance funding.
You can apply for help with childcare costs, up to £183.75 per week for one child or up to £315.03 per week for two or more children.
You’ll need to complete the main application for student finance from Student Finance England, and then an additional Childcare Grant application form (CCG1) that you can download from your student finance account.
This allowance is to help with course-related costs like books, study materials and travel if you have dependent children. You can get up to £1,863 per year depending on your income and that of those you live with.
Any amount you’re entitled to is paid in addition to your main student finance package. It’s paid directly into your bank account in three instalments, at the same time as any Maintenance Loan or Grant you get.
If you have a disability we encourage you to get in touch during your application process so we can discuss what support we can offer you.
Our Student Support Team offers specialist support throughout your application journey and once you start with us, you can email hestudentsupport@ucleeds.ac.uk
These grants help to pay the essential extra costs you may have as a direct result of your disability including a mental-health condition, or specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia or dyspraxia.
What you’re entitled to depends on your needs assessment, this is an informal meeting to discuss what equipment and support will help you. It can go towards essential extra costs like human support, travel, assistive technology and training, and it doesn’t have to be paid back.
If you’re going to study full-time and are applying for a loan you can process your DSA with your application to Student Finance England. If you’re not applying for a loan or you’re studying part-time you can still complete a DSA1 form with Student Finance England.
Support Available at University Centre Leeds
If you have any questions about fees and funding, our Outreach team offers specialist advice about all aspects of student finance. You can get in touch to arrange a 1-to-1 meeting with the team by email: engage@ucleeds.ac.uk or phone 0113 235 6679.
Student Finance & Budgeting Workshops
Join us for an online information session all about student finance - what it entails, how to apply, repayment plans and the thresholds for household incomes. We run events throughout the year, find out when our next event is on our Events page.
Hardship Fund
The University Centre Leeds Hardship Fund provides additional financial help towards the essential costs associated with being a student.
The Hardship Fund aims to help current students who experience financial hardship with their living costs and excludes any support towards tuition fees, continuation fees or resits.
Students can apply from September and will be required to submit evidence in their application
